I have to travel for work in the near future, and one of those trips is to London. Going isn’t particularly optional, and I can’t exactly carpool or take the train to get to London, can I? What’s a crunchy greenie to do?
I could rationalize it by saying that I don’t fly very often, and I already know I’ll never be perfectly green. But air travel is pretty rough on the environment, significantly more so than driving a car. While the additional weight to carry me and my luggage on the plane isn’t going to add much to a flight that will go from Chicago to London whether I’m on it or not, it’s not the same as completely avoiding air travel. Or I could try to undo some of the damage with carbon offsets.
We hear less these days about carbon offsets because it seems that so many selling them are not actually doing anything to offset greenhouse gas emissions. They’re just taking the money. Supposedly there are some legit companies out there, but I’m not sure who they are. There are also, from what I hear, watchdog organizations that have lists of legit companies, so if I find any of those, maybe I can go that route.
So, readers, what would you do? Do you think I’m worrying about this too much? Do you know of any carbon offset watchdog organizations, ones that you trust?
